Malian government accused of censoring news site

New York, December 10, 2013--The Committee to Protect
Journalists is alarmed by reports a Malian website based in Paris has been
threatened by Mali's government after posting an Associated Press (AP) story today
implicating Malian soldiers in extrajudicial killings.

The editor of the news portal Maliactu, Sega Diarrah, told AP he received two separate phone
calls and an email from Mali's defense and communications ministries saying that
they would block his website in Mali if the AP story was not withdrawn.

"I was forced to take down the
article," Diarrah told AP in an interview today. "I judged that the blocking of my web site in Mali
was a repercussion that would be even more negative for my publication than taking
down the article."

Reached by CPJ, Army Col. Diarran Koné and Army Lt. Col.
Souleymane Maïga, two spokesmen for Mali's defense ministry, said they were unaware
of any censorship orders.

"Personally, I have never asked anyone to remove information
from a website," Maïga told CPJ.

The findings of the six-month AP investigation, first distributed by the news agency on December 8, document
reprisal killings of ethnic Arab residents of Timbuktu after French and Malian
forces liberated the northern town from the grip of Al-Qaeda-linked militants
in January.

The AP story details its discovery
of the bodies of six Arab residents of Timbuktu in the Sahara desert outside
the town. It contains eyewitness accounts alleging the victims were kidnapped
by a Malian army unit. Malian authorities have consistently denied involvement
in the killings, according to the AP report.

Local and international
journalists who have reported critically about Mali's military have faced
arbitrary detentions, imprisonment, intimidation, and censorship, according to CPJ research. In April, the
Malian army expelled French journalist Dorothée Thiénot from the city of Gao after she published an article that cited claims by anonymous local residents that Malian
soldiers were killing real or perceived Islamist insurgents and their
accomplices.

"The Malian army has a history of censoring and intimidating
journalists who scrutinize its activities," said CPJ Africa Advocacy
Coordinator Mohamed Keita. "We urge authorities to investigate the allegations
of intimidation against Maliactu and issue a clear public message that
journalists and news outlets can do their work without fear of reprisal."

Saouti Labass Haïdara, editor of the private
newspaper L'Indépendant, which is
printed in Bamako, Mali's capital, but
has no website of its own, told CPJ that his newspaper republished the AP
investigation in today's edition without problem.

CPJ could not immediately establish that any other Malian
websites had posted the AP story. Local journalists said the government may have
been unnerved at the appearance of the story on a popular Malian news
aggregation site, which reaches a much larger audience abroad.